Autumn is the time for apples. And it was our topic of enquiry for yesterday's 'class'.
A lovely client of mine has two apple trees which she allowed us to pick from. Pink ladies and Granny Smith apples in abundance. The kids had a ball picking the fruit, exclaiming over its size and realising that a truly organic apple is less than 'perfect' in its appearance.

Armed with our bounty it was back to the farm for a day or serious play and apple preparation.....

Along with our fabulous French wwoofers we sat around the table, peeling, coring and chopping apples and chatting about life...

What followed was apple sauce and apple crumble with ice cream, swimming in the river, jumping off the houseboat as well as a game of 'let's turn ourselves into mud monsters and morph completely into the landscape...'

This weekend, a whole bunch of musos, music lovers, magic makers and good vibes tribespeople gathered to celebrate the third annual ' Wot Doin' festival at a stunning property just out of Bulahdelah.
We were joined in the merriment by my old and golden friend Kath and her beyond gorgeous children. Here we are at the hand crafted wire work, mirror, sea glass and wood festival 'entrance'. Kath and I are both big art lovers and it was great to share the inspiration that had gone into the design and execution of this event.
'Easy to Like' Mike and I joined the Distant Sons (Gavs band) for a fun set of originals including sweet harmonies provided by yours truly and Mike kicking it on he spoons. It was pretty spesh singing songs about our life together (including one about the boys obsession with Minecraft!) with old friends all around and nothing but green and sky and smiles wherever you looked.

One of the signature features of this festival was the slip n slide. What do you get when you add kids, a long strip of plastic, soap and water? FUN!

We also shared in a feast which consisted of a home raised pig cooked Argentinian style over hot coals, as well as wood fired pizza. Flex was the number one helper with this.

It was a super hot weekend so we spent lots of time in the enchanting little creek which runs through the bottom of the property. We bird watched ( a rufous fantail oh yeah!), built dams, found treasures and lazed in the clear running water....such a beautiful fairy glen.

And what festival is complete without a handsome and charming ginger moustachioed strong man putting on a private magic show? Huh? Well it all started with Lucky being hoisted into the air on Sebastian's shoulders...

He then wowed us all with coin and card tricks peppered with jokes and a fair bit of cheekiness. I love carnies!!!!

Amongst all this, a helicopter landed, we danced the land up, drank champagne, made new friends and caught up with lots of old ones.
Thanks to the Davidsons who put on a damn fine shindig. Already looking forward to next year....

I wanted to give the kids a chance to be 'the leader' every once in a while, so we have designed something pretty fun. Once a month, we will go on a 'perfect homeschooling big day out' which has been designed, planned and budgeted for by one of the kids. Yesterday it was Christian's turn, and he had us all head into the city to visit the Australian Museum, eat KFC and play in a park.
He was in charge of buying the train tickets, deciding where we would sit and other such details. It led to a really interesting discussion on what makes a good leader...the kids thought that 'thinking of others', 'being kind', 'knowing what you are doing' and 'not being bossy' were important, as well as 'sharing' and 'not just doing it for yourself'. Wise kids.
Our first appointment at the museum was with a Canadian journalism student who was doing a research assignment on homeschooling and wanted some families to interview and film. So we did that and the children were articulate and honest in their responses to various questions about homeschooling. They also had that weird experience of having to repeat conversations so the camera could capture different angles! They did really well.

We then went on the explore the amazing world of nature that the museum serves to showcase....the awesome microscopes were very popular...Flex loved looking at tiny fish;

And his fingerprint. Check out the patterns! They remind me of the fossilised sea bed we saw at Kings canyon in the outback....

Lissette had a ball examining her 'disgusting' bitten fingernail...even the passing high schoolers found it pretty gross!!

Lucky and Lissette are developing a lovely friendship. They seem to really enjoy each others company. Here they are watching the reenactment of the dinosaur stampede at Lark Quarry in outback Queensland (been there!!!):

Soon it was time for lunch....we had discussed the KFC option earlier in the day (while looking up all the artificial colours and preservatives on the iPhone) and Christian as the wise leader had consented that we could find a healthier option....I'm not sure exactly how much healthier it is, but we ended up having Ogalo chicken burgers and schweppes lemonade, and enjoyed watching music videos in the shop while we ate.
LMFAO are still pretty funny.

Then it was time for the play in the park. The kids gathered small yellow figs and chucked them at each other, which developed into a mammoth game of 'Get the Flag'. They ran, they yelled, they argued, they sorted it out.
I lay on the grass and napped ;)
Back to the museum, where everyone could kind of do what they wanted. Christian went off exploring, Lissette, Lucky and I did the Alexander the Great treasure hunt and checked out a REAL mummy, Flex finished writing out his favourite specimen work and we all oohed and aahed over the gold nuggets, diamonds and other precious things.
And, there's always time for some dress ups.....

The train home was chockers and we were lucky to get seats. Then a group of elderly people came along and after a meaningful look from me, the kids all got up to offer their seats. It led to lots of chatting with this lovely group, one of whom was an ex school teacher. She was naturally very curious about the why and how of homeschooling, and commented on how friendly and confident the children were. The kids were showing them photos of our day on the iPad and we laughed and played charades the whole way home. Walking back to the car we gave Christian a golf clap for designing a great day out, giggled at the funny points of the day and slept REALLY well that night....

After doing our school work over a $2.95 hot breakfast at IKEA we headed to Olympic park for some fun!
This included some epic swinging;

Some awesome Parkour on the spongey surfaces which was a lot of fun;

Followed by climbing in this amazing architecturally advanced fun house;

Lucky and I released our inner monkey!

After this we followed the old railway tracks to the art express exhibition.

The art express was waky, weird, and wonderful. The students who created these amazing works of art possessed great skill, imagination, and determination. My favourite was a stop motion animation called 'Stream'.

Not a bad day at school....:)
Ps. This was a adventure by Flex.

I noticed the tree right away.
It's luminous green, the pendulous orbs which hung from its branches, so perfect and seductive.
This is the garden of Eden, I thought. And right here we have the tree of knowledge. The story of Adam and Eve has always perplexed me. Not only because of its complete disregard for evolution, but because this God, this father figure, did not want his children to be curious. Of course children are curious! If you tell a child "whatever you do, don't look in the third drawer of my desk", well you are asking for that drawer to be marauded.
And it was the 'tree of knowledge' for crying out loud! It is like saying "whatever you do kids, have fun, play your little hearts out, but DO NOT learn anything." Weird.
Of course, I know the bible was a commissioned work written many years after any events depicted may have taken place. And I know it is allegory or metaphor not factual reportage. But demonising a poor apple tree? All my pagan earth mother sensitivities take offence to that!! I prefer the story of Prince Siddharta (buddha) sitting under an apple tree and becoming enlightened through inner and outer observation....
Anyway, back to this particular tree...it grew next to a stone path in the splendid gardens of the Blackheath Vipassana Meditation Centre.I walked past it on the way from my dorm to the meditation hall, a walk taken at least 8 times every day for 10 days. So the tree became like a friend, a landmark on the pilgrimage, a constant sentinel watching us silent figures walking wrapped in our meditation shawls, to and fro, to and fro. Searching, seeking, stepping.
After the tree's obvious beauty and proliferation of green blushing apples, the first thing that struck me were the birds. This tree was the local cafe to the gorgeous collection of king parrots and rosellas which lived in the nearby bush. They hung in the branches, chattering their bird business. They argued, they played and they ate. They munched and crunched on those hanging apples, beaks glistening with juice, sometimes hanging upside down to get at a particularly succulent fruit. Sometimes they sat on the ground beneath the tree and snacked on the fallen bounty, sharing the spoils with one wary wallaby who was also enticed by the free and easy lunch.
I delighted in watching all of this activity. It was colourful entertainment in an environment deliberately devoid of distraction. And yes, I stole minutes away from my meditation practice to watch the birds. But then something began to happen.....
The tree began to illustrate everything I was learning.
'Annica' or impermanence. Yep, there it was right in front of my eyes. Some apples round and shiny and ripe, others small and darker green signalling their sourness, and more still rotting on the branches and falling to putrify on the ground. Constantly changing. Growing and dying at the same time.
Suffering. These birds which I had seen as a symbol of beauty and freedom, were in fact constantly in fear. They flew away if someone approached noisily and as I sat and watched them eat, they always had one eye trained on the potential threat that I, in fact, was. They fought with each other over the best apples and some of what I had interpreted as 'play' was actually jostling for position. Nothing carefree going on at all!
Craving. One particular bird that I watched seemed determined to have the best apples and would chase other birds around the tree, bullying them mercilessly. But this bird was never satisfied! He would manage to secure an apple for himself, take a few nibbles, then spy another bird whose apple looked better and off he went! A perfect example of wanting whatever he didn't have rather than enjoying what he did have. A little feathered slave to his own craving.

And on it went. Stillness. Growth. Reaction. All perfectly explained by this one humble tree. The Buddha told us that we are nature, and so can reach the ultimate truth by studying nature within ourselves. This is dhamma as I understand it, and dhamma for me was taught by the apple tree.
No sexy snakes or angry gods in sight.

Homeschooling gives you the opportunity to think about what you really want your kids to learn. Sure, all the usual stuff comes up - addition, spelling, the three r's, but then you start going a little deeper. What do I consider important?
Honesty?
Compassion?
Gratitude?
Kindness?
Creativity?
How do I 'teach' these things? These abstract nouns which don't come with step by step manuals and progress charts.
How do I teach someone how great it feels to make somebody else feel good?

How do you encourage them to not only 'learn about' art, but incorporate creativity into their daily lives?

How do you teach them to share their curiosity with others, even those younger and less experienced then themselves? How do you encourage them to develop empathy for the experiences of others (such as an 80 year old Dutchman and his life as a boy during WW2).

Experience.
I now realise that so many things cannot be taught, they can only be experienced and the learning be absorbed consciously or unconsciously by this embodied participation.
This is why I consider giving the boys a massage filled with love to be as valuable as doing their spelling test.
What do you value?

"He should change his name to Neil Old" proclaimed my godson as we watched the living legend take to the stage in all his wrinkled, saggy, grey haired and flannel shirted glory. The godfather of grunge then proceeded to rock the vineyard valley for the next few hours and the kids were suitably gob smacked. Plus it was so loud, nobody could hear them anyway. All they could do was dance.

It was a fantastic concert. There were murmurings among the crowd of 'he's not playing enough hits' or ' geez these songs go on forever', but I was blissfully absorbed in the beautiful cacophony of sound from all that vintage gear being played by old rockers having a blast.
And the bittersweet ache of remembering my brother-in-law's passion for Neil's music and therefore the pain of missing him (Brett passed away from leukaemia years ago) was ever present. But I am so grateful he was part if my life and he taught me such valuable skills as how to surf, how to play the guitar and how to appreciate great music.
And now I get to pass all this into my own children....

We also stopped at a pretty epic sculpture park on the way to the Hunter Valley. Perusing the catalogue we imagined which sculptures would look good at the freedom farm and how we might come up with a spare $36,000 to purchase one;)

We also discussed the different reasons people might buy a large sculpture and Gav, being a retailer, suggested the marketing implications of owning a 'big thing'. Like if you owned a scuba diving shop....

We camped at a great caravan park in Cessnock with some of the members of Gav's band and their families. Between them they have 5 girls under the age of 6 so we all enjoyed some girly interaction! I played hula hoops with them, Flex caught them when they jumped into the pool and they developed a Beatles-like obsession with Lucky and chased him around all day long! He commented "they are really fun to play tip with....they never, EVER give up!".
We cooked pizza in the woodfired pizza oven (skilfully managed by Flex), lazed by the pool, played lots of music and generally enjoyed the delicious experience of taking the time to slow down...and on the way home, extended the relaxation by having a picnic by the 'Wobbly Creek', where we played in quicksand (!), watched a leech swimming and had a boat race.
Aaaaaaaaahhhhh....

So there I was, quietly face booking in the kitchen about our upcoming weekend with Neil Young in the Hunter valley, when....wait a minute! Face booking? In the kitchen? Yes, you read right people, the freedom farm now has wi fi!!!! After 3 long years of sitting first in the shed ( as this was the only place close enough to the new Internet satellite) and then at the 'bar' to do all our internetting, we now have the fabulous freedom to google in the bathroom! To download on the balcony! To blog ANYWHERE!!!
I'm agog with possibilities.
It's exciting and somewhat terrifying...what will be next? Mobile phone reception? The horror!!!! It's kind of nice living in the metaphorical dark ages sometimes...

Anyway, where was I? Oh that's right, Neil Young. So I was standing in the kitchen posting a photo of our ticket to see the man and his Crazy Horse this weekend, and I was standing really still waiting for my pic to upload, ( let me just say I am awesome at standing/sitting/lying really still after doing it 12 hours a day at Vipassana - booya!) when a tiny grey fluff ball scampered out from behind the oven. Nose twitching, it searched around for any leftover smears of dinner and seemed oblivious to me. Me, still as a statue. A statue of a ninja. My ninja eyes followed the rodent and my ninja brain devised a cunning plan.

A colander. I would catch this mousy critter with nothing but my swift reflexes, patience and a colander.
And that my friends, is exactly what happened.

Of course my gleeful pride, my 'I am Bear Grylls in a woman's body - humanely and skilfully catching small creatures with nothing but my skill and a handy kitchen utensil' gloating, awoke Flex and there was no stopping him from joining the hunt.
He chose a sistema Tupperware container as his weapon of choice and with bucketloads of zen oozing from every pore he stood and waited. And waited. And waited for little mousy's friends to come out and play. He even set up the iPad to record the moment. He was so still and quiet I swear I could hear tumbleweed rolling in Arizona. And sure enough, out poked a twitching nose to sniff at the hunk of French sourdough fruit loaf he had set out as bait, and wham! Down came the Tupperware!

Big Gav then joined in the discussion on how to get the mice from under their respective receptacles and into their overnight lodgings and transportation enclosure. It was all very thrilling for 10.45 pm on a Wednesday nightly me tell you.
So now they are off with Gav for a ride in a convertible, to be released somewhere lovely and far FAR away from our kitchen.
Much better and more fun than disposing of squished fluff balls in a mousetrap or finding ones dying on the front deck riddled with poison.

And they got to spend their last night with us in a soup pot snacking on French sourdough fruitloaf.

I am out of the time warp that is vipassana and needed to settle back into my 'real' life before writing about this experience. So many times I have tried to describe it or various aspects of it and no word has been sufficient. And I know a fair few words.
Sit.
Breathe.
Feel.
Try not to freak out.
That pretty much sums it up.
I know, I will seek comfort in the good old metaphor to begin my journey of recording this experience.....

Vipassana is akin to childbirth. You have heard so much about it and done some research so when the time comes there is a bubbly, slightly fearful anticipation fizzing around in your stomach.
You arrive, take stock of your surroundings and then basically get to work....this work is sometimes slow, sometimes fast, can be boring when time becomes a snail, exhilarating when interior worlds start to open. You have a-ha moments as clear as diamonds and slide between consciousness and unconsciousness on a moment to moment basis.
You have people around supporting you with food and words but really, the nuts and bolts job is entirely up to you.
It is incredibly painful. I mean physically, what did I do to deserve this, oh my god make the pain go AWAY kind of painful.
It is exhausting.
It is savagely beautiful and full of calm waters and raging rivers all at once.
It is an ordeal.
You come out lighter and smiling, with a new gift cradled in your arms. A gift that needs your loving and compassionate attention all day in order to flourish in this mad world.
What a gift.


I will write more over the next few weeks about the whole trip (!) and share some photos, but for now, I sit and breathe and feel....the freaking out has passed.